Smoke Meaning
/sməʊk/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounThe visible vapor/vapour, gases, and fine particles given off by burning or smoldering material.
nounA cigarette.
Sentence Examples
You had better not smoke while on duty.
You smoke far too much. You should cut back.
Do you mind if I smoke?
CEFR Practice Quiz
The man likes to ____ a cigarette after dinner every night.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We could see dark ____ rising from the chimney as the family started a fire in the fireplace.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English smoke, from Old English smoca (“smoke”), probably a derivative of the verb (see below). Related to Dutch smook (“smoke”), Middle Low German smôk (“smoke”), German Schmauch (“smoke (from a gun barrel)”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"If those were the days, however, when steam was triumphant, they were also the days of smoke. Nowhere was this so apparent as at "Kings Cross (Suburban)" where, one after another, the Great Northern tank engines thumped their way up the incline and emerged from the tunnel, in clouds of steam and smoke, to pound their way up the last few hundred feet of gradient alongside the platform."
— 1952 October, C. A. Johns, “One Hundred Years at Kings Cross—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 657:
"Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles."
— 2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29:
"2019, Idles, "Never Fight a Man With a Perm", Joy as an Act of Resistance.
I said I've got a penchant for smokes and kicking douches in the mouth / Sadly for you my last cigarette's gone out"
—
"ERCS Guard: Got a smoke? We're all out."
— 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Noveria:
"I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching."
— 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The man likes to ____ a cigarette after dinner every night.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
We could see dark ____ rising from the chimney as the family started a fire in the fireplace.